White Supremacy in Colonies

In Messay’s book brokered boundaries, he talks about the living conditions and ideology after they came to the U.S. Many of them are unable to adapt the American culture and suffer from the discrimination. Therefore, generally these immigrants live in the lower class in American society, and they have less power to dominate in the Country. Also the same situation happened on the early generations of Chinese immigrants in the U.S, and the Arabian immigrants in France. It is really hard for immigrants fit the society and get the respect from others in the early times. However, during 19th, groups of immigrants are different from them. Those people came from the rich western countries like Britain, France and Spain, and they moved to their countries’ colonies in developing countries. In Magaret Duras Book, the Lover, she talks about a poor French family in Vietnam. Even though their economic situation is bad, but their race still have the high social status in the colony. Therefore, I believe that the powers will decide the immigrants’ status in the country.

By the late 1880, France government controlled Vietnam and other southeast Asian countries, and these areas were considered as French Indochina. These colonies were developed fastly, and they turned to be the most lucrative colonies for France. Therefore, more and more French people moved to Vietnam to search economic opportunities or work for the government. The female main character Jane’s family moved to Vietnam from France, and her mother worked in the local schools. In their lives, we can see the segregation in Vietnam and the differences of the social status among races.

Having strong political power can ensure the race’s to have the privilege in the country. Even though French people were new to Vietnam, because they had the absolute power on politics, they could make the regulations by themselvs. They had the right to enact policies and laws, so all rules are made for benefit French people. Therefore, They have the superiority in the colonies, and the society was divided into several levels. White was considered as the top class in Vietnam. For instance, in The Lover, it describes the segregation situation in French Vietnam colony. There were reserved seats for the white on public transportation, and French kids went to different schools from the local students. All these rules provided white people advantageous , so they lived better than the local citizens.

Economic is also an essential factors to determine immigrants’ social status. Under the protection of the French government, the white people in colonies can have a better economic conditions than the local citizens. Most profitable business were run by the white people, and they could find high salary jobs much easier. In addition, when the white people in colonies were in the poverty, the government will give them necessary assistances on economy. In the Lover, the main character Jane was from a very poor French family in the colony. However, their lives were much better than the local Vietnams. Her family still had a maid to serve them, and they had enough food to eat. Like she said in the book, “we are poor, but we do not need to starve, because we are whites.” The whites in the colony live have the power to dominate the society, because they are rich, and money helps them to live in a high standard. Thus, the social status of French people is high in Vietnam.

Political power and economic situations are crucial factors to develop the race’s social status. The colony provide more opportunities to the dominant race, and they are above the local people as well as other races. Therefore, the white people in Vietnam had the superiority in the society.

http://alphahistory.com/vietnam/french-colonialism-in-vietnam/

A Positive Relationship: More Than A Mascot.

Possibly the most fascinating case out of all the name controversy is probably the relationship between the Seminole tribe and Florida state's mascot's Chief Osceola and Renegade. This mascot tradition began on warm Saturday morning in 1978. The tradition included Chief Osceola on his Appaloosa Horse riding to midfield and then planting the burning spear his was carrying in the turf. Insuring that the Chief was accurately depicted always has been a essential part to the integrity of the mascot. Florida State makes efforts to ensue that the depiction is accurate as possible and thus have gained tremendous support from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, although they have not earned the support of everyone.

With that said the Seminole Tribe of Florida was more than impressed with the tradition that Florida State put they decided to honor Chief Osceola and Renegade. Student Drake Anderson, who currently plays the role of Chief Osceola , alongside leader and former Mascot Allen Durham with six members of the Osceola and Renegade team traveled to the tribe's Brighton Indian Reservation for a parade in which they would be honored, that took place on Feb. 18 2012. Allen Durham had this to say about his experience visiting the reservation, "In order to preserve the dignity of our portrayal of Osceola and Renegade, we normally don't make any appearances outside of Florida State football games," said Durham, who portrayed Osceola while he was a Florida State student. "But certainly with the Seminole Tribe requesting it, we were absolutely honored and most definitely said 'yes' to this very special request."

I think this is a case of the best way to handle earning the right to to use a mascot that involves sacred traditions of another ethnicity's culture.

Stand Your Ground and Richard Combs

As the nation is still reeling from a number of highly publicized police shootings that resulted in, what many consider, the unjust deaths of black civilians, (now) former Orangeburg, SC officer Richard Combs was indicted in the shooting and killing of Bernard Bailey during an interaction over a traffic ticket.

Bailey
(source)

Combs
(source)

Media outlets have exploded recently over events involving the deaths of a number of black citizens. In August, unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed at the hands of a white officer. Despite controversy over whether the shooting was justified, a grand jury failed to indict him. Recently, NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was not indicted for using an illegal chokehold on unarmed black citizen Eric Garner, resulting in Garner’s death. Despite video evidence, a grand jury also failed to indict Pantaleo. There have been a number of highly publicized shootings of black civilians in the news, including 12 year old Tamir Rice.

(source)

Unfortunately, the death of Combs took place in May of 2011. Many such incidents were not as highly publicized. Many still aren’t. However, recent events combined with, what one may hope, is a growing awareness of injustice and racial disparity in the US Justice System have lead to greater and greater public attention of such incidences. That being said, despite public pressure, the failure to indict Pantaleo left many pessimistic.

(source)

As such, the indictment of Combs stand in contrast to recent trends in such cases.

Combs, apparently, had gone to city hall to contest his daughter’s traffic ticket. The Associated Press writes that:

When he showed up, the chief tried to arrest Bailey, a 6-foot-6 former prison guard.

Prosecutors said Bailey marched back to his truck, and Combs tried to get inside to turn off the ignition. The two briefly fought, and Combs shot Bailey, 54, twice in the chest.

Combs tried to claim a “stand your ground” defense, saying he got tangled in the steering wheel and was scared for his life should Bailey drive away. 

Apparently, Combs’ indictment is one of three this year alone wherein white officers shot unarmed black men in SC. The state has a past of civil rights violence, and racial issues that have carried over very blatantly into the present.

Comb’s attempt to enact the “stand your ground” defense is a prime example of why many feel the laws are dangerous and possible contributors to racial injustice. The ability to shoot somebody based on “fear” is subjective, the idea that a person’s first reaction to being scared is to shoot a terrifying one. Combined with racial stereotypes that provoke discomfort and nervousness, or general dislike, this could easily lead to a number of racially fueled deaths, such as in the case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.

One resident of the small town stated that people may develop a more aggressive attitude about the case, should Combs not be found guilty of murder.

Sources:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/allegations-of-police-misconduct-rarely-result-in-charges/

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/sc-cop-charged-murder-unarmed-man-shooting-27362718?page=2

http://thetandd.com/news/judge-no-stand-your-ground-defense-in-shooting-ex-eutawville/article_8e06fc66-7b60-11e4-b9a8-1ba299f9a3f8.html

Is race too offensive to be taught?

This year, Alan Barron, a middle school history teacher, resumed his job after being put on administrative leave due to his controversial method of teaching race. During one of his classes, he showed the class a video of white entertainers putting on blackface for their theatrical acts. A school administrator observed his class and took offense. After Barron was called to the main office, he was taken out of school. He spent two weeks in an administrate gulag, which is a place where you are discouraged from expressing your opinions. This is because his teaching methods went against the education bureaucracy. During, an interview however, Barron pointed out that as a history teacher, sometimes you need to teach things that happened that are offensive. He named off Racism, the Crucifixion, wars, and Japanese-American internment during World War II as things that were offensive, but also as things that all happened, noting “You don’t skip history because it might offend.” And apparently, the parents of the students he was teaching agreed. After the students reported to their parents what had happened to him, they got upset because they all knew he was a good teacher and didn’t want to see him go. One mother, whose daughter and husband were black, and whose father was from Iraq, said that she wasn’t offended, and that Barron shouldn’t have gotten in trouble for showing something that happened. This led to the idea that schools are just ignoring certain parts of history that might offend. After all the parents got together to protest, Barron was allowed to return to teaching.

All of this really makes you wonder- why did the school want to skip over parts of history that might want to be considered offensive. Like it or not, the students need to learn that some bad stuff has happened in the world at some point, and it’s better for them to learn it early so they can better prepare themselves for taking on the world later in life. We can’t just act like everything in life is perfect no matter how much we want to believe it. I don’t think it was right for the teacher to be sent to the gulag because he was just doing his job. I hope this is something that doesn’t happen that often, because people shouldn’t get in trouble for teaching events that they had no control over.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-06-05/news/ct-kass-met-0605-20140605_1_history-school-administrator-segregation

Black Performer in France:Josphine Baker

Josephine

Josephine Baker played a huge role in both American and French Music. She was a phenomenal woman who broke down racial barriers and assisted in expanding the need of Black musicians around the world.  Unfortunately, Baker had given up on America because of the racist laws in the South and the Music industry's ignorance regarding African American artists.  Baker grew up in St, Louis Missouri in the early 1900’s beginning her career as a performer. She toured with circuits around the South which was a hard time for African Americans living in the South. After joining a musical group that performed in Paris France, Baker loved the fact that she was  free to walk the streets  of  Paris without facing any form of racism from her French counterparts(Kear,1996)

Her career also  skyrocketed in France when she was offered both singing and acting contracts playing the main character in numerous French movies and musicals. 

Baker with French fans

Compared to the lesser roles that she was given in the American film industry, the French industry made Baker a superstar in numerous movies. One French movie that gave its first leading role to a Black women was Zou Zou, where she falls in love with a white male character. This was a surprise to her because she would never have been given this role in the racist American film industry. Ultimately, Baker was in love with the French and she even assisted the French Resistance by smuggling secrets written in invisible ink on her sheet music during the Second World War. As a result, she became the first American-born woman to receive the highest French military honor, the Croix de Guerre. When asked about the difference between France and the United States, she stated, “The French people adopted me immediately, they all went to dark beaches to get dark like Josephine Baker” In this example Baker is illustrating the fact that France was a better place for her to live as a Black women because her skin color and race was not looked down upon (Kear,1996).

As she continued to play a huge role France's musical and film industries, "Place Joséphine Baker" in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was also named in her honor.  Her name has also been incorporated at Paris Plage, a man-made beach along the river Seine "Piscine Joséphine Baker". Bakers's experiences in France, reflected that of many other African artists who were welcomed by  the French with open arms compared to the racist attitudes they  faced in United States.

http://www.biography.com/people/josephine-baker-9195959

Kear, Jon. "Venus noire: Josephine Baker and the Parisian Music-hall'."Parisian Fields (1996): 56.

War on Drugs: Past to Present

Before President Nixon’s official declaration in 1971 that began the War on Drugs, the federal government had a history of criminalizing drug users based on their race.  In the late 1800’s, middle-aged white women were known to use opium, as did their counterparts in China.  After a wave of Chinese migration to the United States, viewed by whites as a threat to jobs, opium use was criminalized in western states where, “The legislation was aimed less at the drug than at the people deemed to be the primary users-Chinese immigrants (Fraser, “Tolerance,” 427).  The fear was irrational because the jobs that the Chinese took were low paying and ones that Americans refused to do. In 1910, as a result of a “political upheaval in Mexico,” there was a mass migration by Mexicans to the United States (The Mysterious History of ‘Marijuana’, Thompson).  Since Mexicans were notorious marijuana users and because they, too, were seen as an economic threat, the government criminalized marijuana use (The Mysterious History of ‘Marijuana’, Thompson). 

These examples demonstrate that the United States has long used drug prohibition to target specific minorities. Today, people of color are the target. President Nixon’s announcement began the surge of people incarcerated for drug crimes.  The chart below displays the United States Prison Incarceration Rate from 1968 to 2013 and describes specific policies enacted during this period responsible for the incarceration rate’s exponential growth. 

 One major consequence of the War on Drugs has been the disproportionate numbers of people of color incarcerated for drug offenses. Studies report that black and white people use drugs at a similar rate, yet blacks, 13% of the US population, make up 37% of people arrested for a drug offense (A Look at the Racial Disparities Inherent in Our Nation's Criminal-Justice System, Kerby).  Not only are black people more likely to be arrested as the chart below indicates,  the U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that, “Sentences imposed on Black males in the federal system are nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of the similar crimes” (U.S. SENTENCING COMM’N, REPORT ON THE CONTINUING IMPACT OF UNITED STATES V. BOOKER ON FEDERAL SENTENCING (Jan. 30, 2013)

         

The higher proportion of incarcerated black people dates back to 1986 when the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed (Congress passes bill to reduce disparity in crack, powder cocaine sentencing, Abrams). The act designated $1.7 billion to “fight” the War on Drugs, which included the addition of mandatory minimum sentences (Thirty Years of America’s Drug War, PBS). It was expected that, having a specific time length set that one would spend in jail for their crime, would serve as a deterrent to others thinking of committing that same drug offense. In effect, judges lost their power to sentence someone based on their own judgment and understanding of the situation prison (What are Mandatory Minimums, FAMM).  

The penalties for crack cocaine were much higher than for powdered cocaine. Crack was relatively inexpensive, easy to produce, and quite powerful which describes its popularity in low-income and urban areas. The media perpetuated an image of a crack user as black, poor, and dangerous, even though, “most of the users were white, but the only people who knew this were statisticians” (Gray 2000:107). “During the Reagan era, the cocaine problem, as defined by the network news, became increasingly associated with people of color” (Gray 2000:106).

Powdered cocaine has virtually the same chemical structure of crack, but because crack is smoked and not snorted, it has a higher potency. The Nixon administration saw crack as more harmful than powdered cocaine and, as a result, someone who was sentenced for the possession of crack cocaine served the same amount of time as someone who had 100 times the amount of powdered cocaine (Congress passes bill to reduce disparity in crack, powder cocaine sentencing, Abrams).  This didn’t change until August 2010, when President  Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act and eradicated “the five-year mandatory-minimum sentence for first-time possession of crack” (Congress passes bill to reduce disparity in crack, powder cocaine sentencing, Abrams). Instead of a 100:1 sentence disparity, the bill lowered it to 18:1. 

While lowering the crack and powdered cocaine disparity is important and a step in the right direction, it has not changed the over-incarceration of people of color, who    are subjected to racial inequity at each step of the criminal justice process. They are more likely to be stopped (racial profiling), “searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations (Race and the Drug War, DPA). Race cannot and should not ever be the basis to assume guilt. Local law enforcement should not just communities of color for drug raids. The video below is a perfect example: it tells the story of a Drug Enforcement Agency agent told not to enforce drug laws in white areas. 

I find this ludicrous.   This country is far from achieving racial equality even though many seem to think otherwise. If we want to our illusion of equality to be a reality in the near future, as Fredrick Douglass, the African-American social reformer and abolitionist of the Civil War era, would say, we must “Agitate…Agitate…Agitate.” 

The Natural Hair Movement

“We live in a society where racism is often subtle, consisting of such micro-aggressions that collectively attempt to kill black women's spirits.”- Ama Yawson, Huffington Post 

To give some general background information, the natural hair movement is a movement designed to show and express that the natural hair of black people (though shown more through women) is perfectly fine the way it is, and does not need to conform to the ideal of straightness to be beautiful or seen as not dirty. It is also about women enjoying their natural hair, without having to worry about chemicals or procedures to ‘fix’ it. While some people worry that it has become an elitist way to look down on back women who choose to wear weaves or chemically straighten their hair [link] many women find it liberating and enjoy the community they have found in embracing their natural beauty.

"At its base level, the natural-hair movement is practical. It’s a vehicle for women to access bloggers, websites, and their peers to learn how to best care for and style their locks. But, that’s just the basics. The real “movement” of the movement has always been about black women finding self-acceptance." (Link)

Image Link

While there is a lot of positivity in the movement, I would like for focus briefly on the negative feelings that some people have. Some women feel like the natural hair movement is just a way for people to feel elitist. In the article linked above, the woman says that the people who used to look down on her natural hair are now the same people who look down on other black women for not having their hair in its natural state. She also points out that to a lot of people, "hair is just hair" and doesn't have any higher political implications. While all of these points are valid, and even true to individuals, the problem is also that for a lot of people, hair is not just hair, and something that has been used to make them feel bad about themselves or to portray them as "lesser." It has also been used as a tool to give unequal statuses to black women, and a way to portray them as 'other.' 

"Beauty is subject to the hegemonic standards of the ruling class." -Tracy Owens Patton

In her article, Patton talks about the ways in which Euro-centric beauty standards (such as light skin, straight hair, and a smaller figure) can be damaging to women who do not fit these standards, since they are portrayed as the only way for women to be beautiful, and thus, valuable. She states that "Women of color looking for answers through an introspective gaze or through their communities in order to counter White hegemonically defined standards of beauty is not a new occurrence.Historically and into modern times African American beauty has been disparaged. As much of the literature on African American women and beauty has pointed out, African American women have either been the subject of erasure in the various mediated forms or their beauty has been wrought with racist stereotypes." The natural hair movement is a way to fight back against these stereotypes and to show that black women's hair is perfectly fine the way it is. It is a way for women to set their own personal beauty standards and to try and take back power. It seems to be especially important for women to have this power because even today, their is still prejudice regarding something that should be as simple as hair and letting anybody choose to wear it how they want.

Image Link

Recently, there was also a news story about another little girl who was threatened with expulsion because according to her school's dress code, her natural hairstyle of locks was deemed a "fad hairstyle." Video can be found in this article. While there are many reasons a girl can be sent home from school, (due to sexist standards in dress code) hairstyles specifically wore by young black girls fall on this list, even though these 'hairstyles' are just their natural hair.

Debunking the myth of what is beauty would require Euro American women to say "the hell with what men think" and African American women would have to say "the heck with what all of White culture thinks"- Wilson and Russell 1996, 85

  

Sources:

Kenneth. "I Hate the Natural Hair Movement - Curl Centric™." Curl Centric™. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

Patton, Tracey Owens. "Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and Their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair." NWSA Journal 18.2 (2006): 24-51. JSTOR. Web. 22 Nov. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4317206?ref=no-x-route:693717b1204f58362f4112988cf00336>.

Reporter, Daily Mail. "Bullied 12-year-old Girl Is Threatened with Expulsion from School for Refusing to Cut Her Natural Afro Hair." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 26 Nov. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

Klein, Rebecca. "Tiana Parker, 7, Switches Schools After Being Forbidden From Wearing Dreads." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 05 Sept. 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

"Is #TeamNatural For Black Girls Only?" Refinery29. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.